To aim the eye toward objects of interest, primates coordinate the movements of the eyes in the head and the head in space so that eye position in space or gaze (eye position + head position) places the fovea of the two eyes accurately on target. On the basis of our previous experiments, we believe that gaze shifts are produced by the independent control of an eye saccade and a head movement, rather than by the direct control of the overall gaze shift. To test this notion, we dissociated the eye, head and gaze movements, which normally are tightly linked. We accomplished this by reducing the accuracy of saccadic eye movements by behavioral means. Every time the monkey made a targeting saccade we jumped the target backward so the eyes overshot. Over the course of several hundred saccades, the eye gradually reduced its overshoot and eventually saccaded directly to the backstepped target location. When tested with an ordinary step, the eye now fell short; its saccadic efficacy or gain had been altered. After head-fixed eye movement gain was reduced, the gaze movement with the head free experienced a similar reduction. Reductions also occurred for the eye and head components of the gaze shift; however, the reduction of head gain was twice that of the eye. Since head and eye movements can be dissociated in this way, it is unlikely that they are driven by a common gaze signal. Furthermore, the velocities and durations of the hypometric eye and head movements were similar to control movements of the same size. Such a result could be explained most easily if head-fixed adaptation were realized before eye and head components had been individualized. Therefore, gaze adaptation most likely occurs upstream of the creation of separate eye and head movement commands.